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POLITICO reports that President Barack Obama plans to speak at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event next month. This would mark a dramatic rapprochement between the Chamber, which spent tens of millions of dollars in the midterm election to defeat Democrats, and the president, who openly criticized the “world’s largest business federation” for accepting contributions from undisclosed donors.

After the big Republican wins of 2010, will business executives be in a forgiving mood? What should should President Obama say to the CEOs and other executives in the audience?

The president should speak to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and call them out for what they have done in the past election. Tell them to make public the money trail for donations and show some transparency.

The president should not be concerned about their (the Chamber membership's) mood. They should be very concerned about his because many of them seem to not get what his job and title are: President of the United States Barack Obama.

This would be the perfect forum to lay out a bold and detailed plan of action designed to put America first, and get Americans back to work. The Chamber should be challenged to get on board the America First train. Such an event would be a good opportunity to soundly, firmly and finally reject the notion that “those jobs aren’t coming back”.

That tiresome phrase, used endlessly by past presidents as well as the media offers is not an answer nor is it a solution to heal our economy. It is a statement meant to end conversation. And it has ended conversation as American jobs continue to be outsourced and our manufacturing base continues to erode. America cannot be strong unless we have a strong manufacturing base.

Voters couldn’t have spoken more clearly in the midterm election. Americans want their jobs back and they want America to create the next generation of new jobs right here in America. So, now is not the time for the president to flinch. Now is the time to be bold, look the Chamber in the eye and challenge them to be part of solutions that put America first by putting America back to work.

There’s a whole alphabet soup worth of bold suggestions out there for the president to choose from. The bolder the better. No matter what he selects, it’s unlikely President Obama will ever be the poster child of the Chamber.

President Obama should be firm and direct about what the nation needs from the business community. Despite the targeted negativity that was directed to the Democrats in the election it is important that he reaches out to them to let them know its their patriotic duty not to sit on billions in surplus and profits but to work with Congress to shape initiatives to provide opportunities to put Americans back to work. He should push to maintain the focus on small business creation with particular emphasis on tax policies that support businesses that buy, manufacture, sell and hire American.

Most of my clients in the business community are convinced that the president does not fundamentally understand what they are dealing with from their side of the table. They strongly believe that the economy has created one of the most uncertain business climates since the Great Depression and that many of the president's policy initiatives from environmental regulation to financial services reform have actually exacerbated that climate.

The president needs to make clear that his number one priority moving forward is working with the Congress to encourage the private sector to create jobs. As part of that effort, he needs to stipulate up front that there may be rules and other administrative initiatives he would like to undertake that will just have to wait until the economy is back up on its feet and unemployment has subsided. The most concrete thing he can do is bring someone into the White House inner circle who has made payroll as a CEO in the private sector. It is critical that the president demonstrate the views of the business community will be on the table at every senior staff meeting.

Business executives in a forgiving mood? No way, they got what they wanted and will go for more. President Obama will show his strength as he negotiates with their new found power. Eventually they will learn that complete control has its backlash in less than 24 months.

The president could use this event to mark a new opening with the business community and the American people, reminding folks that a person who carried on with President Bush's plan to rescue our largest financial institutions -- and launched a separate rescue plan for the auto industry -- is hardly anti-business, coupled with a call for common-sense, clear steps forward on energy policy, financial regulation and the implementation of health care.

A line I'd like to hear: "People say I'm anti-business. Consumers and America's businesses, small and large, are what drive our economy. How could it be in the interests of those looking for work, and those looking to grow their businesses, for me to be against them? Come to think of it, how could it be in MY interests for me to want the economy to continue to struggle?"

The Chamber is the wrong venue for Obama to speak to business. He will be visibly kowtowing to the guys who beat him up. It will be a humiliating surrender by Obama. He does need to speak to business leaders but it should be to something like the Business Roundtable or the Business Council which are more moderate and willing to be bipartisan than the Chamber.

This Thanksgiving, Corporate America has a lot in which to be thankful. In addition to sizable profits, President Obama has not morphed into the anti-capitalist bogeyman many feared.

While the president is right to recalibrate his approach after the midterms, he should remind business leaders of areas when the administration has been on their side. And the list is actually longer than one might think.

Politicos will remember that during the height of the economic meltdown, many on the liberal left urged the administration to nationalize America's banks. The president rightly refused those calls. Likewise, his considered approach to provide short-term loans to the embattled automobile industry proved smart, and actually saved the country from even further economic uncertainty. According to one report, 1 million jobs were saved by the president's intervention.

Moreover, during the health reform debate, when his party's base was demanding a government-backed health insurance option, the president compromised in a way that enhanced patient choice and preserved the health industry's private delivery system.

Equally noteworthy is the president's activity on the trade front. At the start of his term, the president set a tough, but achievable goal of doubling our nation's exports over the next five years. Interim results suggest that he is well on his way of achieving the goal, especially important when one considers that 95 percent of the world's customers are beyond American borders.

And finally, despite calls from the far left and the far right to scrap the Bush adminstration's TARP program, the president hung tough and endured criticism from both sides. That too was the right approach and a majority of economists and academics agree that it saved the U.S. and world economy from a much more severe, if not catastrophic, meltdown.

Corporate America won't always see eye-to-eye with the Obama administration, but the president's first two years have proven that he is committed to free market principles. That record is a firm foundation on which to strengthen ties to the business community.

The president cannot rely on "just words." Actions matter. A number of industries are facing extraordinary regulatory uncertainty because it appears that the administration will act in a much less transparent way through regulatory agencies.

If the next two years consist of the Obama administration paying off its constituencies through the regulatory process and driving up uncertainty, the economy won't recover, and he will have missed a core message that the voters sent on Nov. 2.

If, on the other hand, he provides a clear vision -- one that executives can plan and invest on -- then there could be room for compromise, cooperation, and, indeed, the economic growth our country needs.

Speaking to the Chamber of Commerce is speaking to the loyal opposition with one huge exception.

Most of us were shocked when the vitriolic yakker Rush Limbaugh two years ago proclaimed his wish that the fledgling Obama administration “fail.” More shocking still was the refusal of right-wing stalwarts, including those in Congress, to walk away from Limbaugh’s unpatriotic schadenfreude. Limbaugh’s wish became GOP strategy for the 111th Congress and the GOP stood solidly in opposition to any idea that would promote the common weal.

Now, it appears that this political strategy has seeped into the world of financial economics as the newly energized Republican majority in the House has joined with a cohort of angry right-wing economists in proclaiming their hostility to the Fed’s QE2 initiative. It’s not just a matter of these folks thinking that QE2 won’t work (it may not) but they don’t even want it to work. It has come to this …

There are two sides of American business, each experiencing the recession very differently than the other: large corporations sitting on hoards of cash from streamlined operations; and medium-sized and small businesses struggling mightily amid the downturn in demand. But both are very angry at President Obama for what they regard as relentless business-bashing hyperbole and an unapologetic bias toward more government and clumsily-designed regulation. They believe with cause that at a time when the president should be doing everything he can to improve the business environment, he's intentionally making it worse. To them, the U.S. Chamber is the only champion they've had for getting in the president's face and telling him he's wrong.

If Obama starts off his Chamber speech next month bragging about his small business relief package or the jobs he saved with his stimulus, expect a mass walkout. Instead, he should talk prospectively and with specifics about tax simplification, the work of the deficit reduction commissions, reversing the paperwork burdens he has added, and reforms to his health care reform.

Businesses want to hear about an operating environment that is more predictable, simpler and more sensitive to their challenges than what they've seen so far. They are rightly suspicious of numerous and overlapping new regulatory agencies and mandates that seem oblivious to the cost and complications of compliance. Moreover, they know that this is not a president who readily admits his mistakes or his ignorance, and so a few self-effacing opening remarks just won't cut it. They don't trust him, and they're as angry as the electorate. If they don't see obvious change, there is no hope for reconciliation.

An apology for the suggestion -- without any evidence whatsoever -- that the Chamber was somehow skirting the law, or the spirit of the law regarding campaign contributions would certainly be in order. Additionally, it would behoove the administration to work to combat the perception that it is anti-business; irrespective of whether the perception is true, its very presence, and the attendant mistrust, is preventing the administration from working effectively with the business community to formulate policies that will bring about healthy economic growth.

Has the Obama administration's Middle East approach made the situation worse? Will it bear fruit in the long run? Was it an error to make Israeli-Palestinian negotiations such a high priority? And how much of a role might the issue play in the 2012 presidential campaign?

Aaron David MillerFormer State Department official; Wilson Center scholar; Author of "Can America Have Another Great President?" :

Like many of the other aspects of his inheritance as president, Barack Obama was dealt a bad-to-middling hand on Arab-Israeli peace by his predecessor. Sadly he then proceeded to make it worse. Let's be clear from the get go: nobody right now - even if you invited Moses, Muhammad and Jesus down to the negotiating table - could get Israelis and Palestinians to a conflict-ending agreement. It's got to be clear even to the interminably obtuse that neither Abbas nor Netanyahu are invested enough right now in the choices that need to be made to accomplish this.

But in the face of this difficult situation, the administration came out loud, hard and fast - focused largely on a settlements freeze it had no chance of producing or sustaining. Twenty months in, the president - a wartime leader with a Nobel Peace Prize (only the second in American history) finds himself with no freeze, no negotiations, no agreement and no process to get there.

There's still a reasonable chance that the administration's approach - a lot of honey for the Israelis (F-35s and political guarantees; and maybe some for the Palestinians too to overcome their objections to East Jerusalem's exclusion from the freeze) - will succeed in launching the process.

But until Netanyahu and Abbas own their negotiations and are prepared to take the decisions necessary to meet one another's needs on the core issues, the Obama team will produce more process than peace. The sad reality is that it's been easy for the small powers to say no to the big one without much cost or consequence. American street cred in Iran Iraq, Afghanistan isn't all that high these days, and so we - chasing the dream of Arab-Israeli peace - are played there as well like a finely tuned violin.

The arc of this process is inevitably leading to the president putting his own ideas or even a plan on the table. We can only hope that he shows more tact and skill in this enterprise than he's demonstrated over the past couple years. Otherwise America will end up taking another hit and watch the foreign policy analogue of BP's Deepwater Horizon play out before our eyes: It's Day 100 and nobody has yet accepted the American peace plan.

President Obama risks more than failure in the Middle East. Failure to produce peace is no stranger to U.S. policy-makers. Beginning with Harry Truman, nearly every White House occupant has given it his best shot. Jimmy Carter, who mid-wifed the Begin-Sadat accord ending Israel.'s occupation of the Sinai, credit for his achievement. No one else has much to show for his efforts, save perhaps Richard Nixon whose value as a friend - and arms supplier - brought Egypt out of the conflict and out of alliance with the Soviet world.

Obama entered this particular arena with a lot going for him. He was known and liked in the Islamic world. He came to office at a time of under-reported but nonetheless remarkable strategic cooperation between the Israelis and Palestinian Authority designed to weaken Hamas, a time when new, highly-regarded Palestinian leaders, such as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are turning the West Bank into a modern profit driven state with a professional security regime responsible to the government and not the thug of the month. Dare I say Obama also had months of groundwork laid by George W. Bush's Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

It takes some effort to mess things up as quickly and completely as the Obama team. But if you let settlements - a final status issue - put in a position to queer the whole deal, if it takes 20 fighter planes to make sure Netanyahu shows up for class, and if you have no coherent plan to build on the diplomatic path plowed by George W. Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the chances are you will not get the parties to move much beyond their opening positions and that those at the table will begin to view your opinions as having little more than nuisance value.

Obama would seem to be approaching this perilous point. Until he shows himself to be an "homme serieux," nothing he says will make any party sit up and listen, let alone obey.

When President Obama took office, the prospects for a Palestinian-Israeli peace were exceedingly remote. More puzzling than his initial decision to plunge headfirst into peacemaking was that the strategy he employed - focusing on an Israeli settlement freeze - guaranteed that no progress would be made.

The Obama administration apparently believed that insisting on a freeze would help restore confidence in America’s ability to be impartial while giving a jolt to the dormant peace process. When the initial 10-month moratorium on Israeli settlement activity ended in September, it was plain to see that Obama’s strategy was not working. Even worse, it strained U.S. relations with all sides, without any progress along the pathway to peace.

Instead of learning from this policy blunder and finding another route to the negotiating table, President Obama is compounding his mistakes by publicly demanding another 90-day extension of the freeze, reportedly in exchange for 20 F-35 fighter jets worth $3 billion, a guarantee that the U.S. will veto unilateral Palestinian initiatives at the United Nations (such as a PA plan to achieve international recognition of a Palestinian state), and a promise that the White House will not request any further extensions of the settlement freeze. In doing so, President Obama is not only dangerously linking unrelated policy matters.

The U.S. has a long history of objecting to anti-Israeli resolutions in international forums not as a favor to Jerusalem but because such resolutions are counterproductive and one-sided. Moreover, Israel’s security in the Middle East has long been a staple of American foreign policy but now Obama is linking it to Israeli construction.

The White House apparently does not understand the current political realities in the Middle East. And it is foolhardy to believe that making the same mistake twice will yield better results. The Palestinian Authority squandered the opportunity for direct negotiations during the 10-month moratorium so there is no reason to think another three months will change anything.

Yet, even if Obama succeeded and direct negotiations commenced, they would fall apart once Palestinians present their redlines for a final status agreement. That is because the problem is not Israeli settlements. The problem is that the PA does not recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Until there is a fundamental change in Palestinian redlines - such as the demand for the full return of Palestinian refugees to Israel - the current approach will likely prove as fruitless (if not, dangerous) as all previous efforts to achieve peace.

Since raising expectations early on, U.S. peace efforts have been characterized by a lot of mixed signals and meandering. Frankly I'm baffled.

Settlement activity, we are told, is "illegitimate", but it now appears to be U.S. policy to deal with the fruits of this illegitimate activity as "accepted realities". And now we are a told that we should massively reward Israel as an incentive to take a pause from this "illegitimate activity" for the next 90 days, only. After which time,...? Either our negotiators have a "trick up their sleeves" or they are indulging a dangerous pipe dream. Having watched this play out for decades - I fear it's the latter.

And what about the Palestinians? Having witnessed six previous Israeli commitments to freeze settlements amount to naught (settler populations have quadrupled since the first "freeze"), they cannot negotiate while the Israelis continue building. As a result, they have been left to watch as we "give away the store" on their behalf.

The so-called peace process has become Kabuki theater -- a tradition that some people take more seriously than others but is never going to produce any different results. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have been defeated, and therefore neither feels compelled to make the concessions the other side would need in order to accept an agreement. And even if by some miracle the negotiators did reach an agreement, neither Netanyahu nor Abbas nor enough political clout to persuade his public to accept it.

Meanwhile, I agree entirely with Dan Kurtzer, the former ambassador to Israel and Egypt, who says Obama's latest deal for a 90-day settlement freeze is folly that has made the situation worse. If the United States has really promised that after the 90 days it will never again ask for a halt to settlements, we have squandered our only source of leverage over Israel's expansionists.

It’s hard to even know where to start on this question. First, I think one has to address Ben Smith’s remarkably one-sided article billed as “A View from the Middle East." It really should have been called “An Israeli View." Of the 559 words in the article which were direct quotes from officials based in the Middle East, 540 of them come from Israelis. That is a stunning 97 percent.

A problem as important as anything Obama is doing or not doing is that Palestinian perspectives are only permitted into the discussion 3 percent of the time. When that fraction is included, it’s often on the fifth of five pages like in this instance. An even bigger travesty is that this is passed off as some sort of balanced presentation of views. One has to wonder what kind of effort was made to speak to Palestinians at all. It seems that Ben Smith swallowed the Israeli propaganda hook, line and sinker, and reproduced it in this article.

In fact, Smith regurgitates the Israeli talking point that a settlement freeze was “Obama’s demand," which promotes the misconception that the Israelis would love a now right-leaning American electorate to accept; that Obama has a personal problem with Israel. The reality is, of course, that a settlement freeze is an Israeli obligation under international law and that the Israeli government accepted this as a first phase obligation under President Bush’s Road Map in 2003. These pertinent facts don’t make it into Smith’s article. Neither does the important reality of colonial expansion around Jerusalem, separating it from the rest of the West Bank.

The mistake Obama’s Middle East team made with Israel was not that it focused on settlements; rather, it was thinking that the Israelis would stop building these illegal colonies if the United States just asked politely. By failing to change Israeli incentives, the United States only emboldened Israel’s colonial drive. This continues today as the U.S. is now begging the Israelis to abide by their own obligations, instead of forcing them to, through billions of dollars worth of F-35s.

Nothing says “we encourage you to make peace with your neighbors” like a shipment of destructive weapons.

This isn’t advance international relations, folks. It isn’t even politics 101. If you want your child to do his homework (which is for their own good anyway) you don’t reward them with goodies each time they don’t do it.

President Obama made a massive miscalculation when he personally put the issue of settlements on the table. That spooked the Israelis and empowered the Palestinians to increase their demands, without doing anything to move the process forward. This administration has made a series of major missteps and miscalculations from Day One.

Keep in mind that Obama came into office accompanied by serious doubts about his commitment to Israel and rather than first building trust on both sides, he talked about building in Jerusalem and raised settlements as a priority issue – something that hadn’t been a priority issue for at least a decade or so.

As a result, Obama has felt pressure at home on this issue and has been criticized domestically by both Republicans and Democrats for putting too much pressure on Israel and not acting as an honest broker. We saw the concerns about his policies in the midterm elections, when the Jewish community gave more than 30 percent of their vote nationally to Republicans (up from the historic midterm average of 24 percent), and from many polls this year that showed that a significant portion of the Jewish community have deep concerns about Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides.

Israelis are also concerned: Polls of Jewish Israelis last year and again this spring showed that less than 10 percent think Obama is pro-Israel.

While we don’t know for sure now what the top issues of the 2012 election will be, there is little question that Obama’s handling of the U.S.-Israel relationship creates an opportunity for Republicans to take a contrasting message to the Jewish community.

Having visited Israel recently with other state legislative leaders, I believe that the strategy is flawed in several ways. First, the Israelis view the timetable for peace to be unrealistic and based on the American political calendar, not on the slow, thoughtful process that will be needed to achieve a secure peace. Second, instead of imposing conditions on Israelis, such as stopping expansion of housing or giving up strategic territory, the U.S. should let negotiations determine the course of action. Why should the Palestinians negotiate anything if the U.S. is going to push Israel to make concessions even before negotiations begin?

It was a colossal mistake by the Bush administration to push for "free" elections by the Palestinian Authority before there was a framework for government, security for voters, and a free press in the Palestinian territory. The result was the election of a Hamas regime which, by the way, is a proxy for Iran. We cannot impose our version of democracy on people who have no tradition or experience with democratic concepts. It takes time for that to develop.

It will be another mistake to push Israel to concede anything before direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority can make substantive progress. Three-way negotiations with the U.S. serving as broker is ineffective. While I have enormous respect for Sen. Mitchell, I think another method is needed to promote peace. The U.S. should insist that direct negotiations begin before Israel imposes any further moratorium on expansion in the disputed territories.

The U.S. should also not be supplying weapons to the government of Lebanon, which is increasingly under the control of Hezbollah and Iran. These weapons will be used against Israel if history is any guide. The U.S. needs to take strong, meaningful action to prevent Iran from moving forward with its nuclear agenda including, if necessary, the potential for military action by the western allies. Iran is the real threat to a lasting peace in Israel and, indeed, the world.

The Obama approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is going nowhere and has indeed made things worse. It was not a mistake to make achieving peace a high priority. It needed and still needs to be a high priority because the unresolved issue poisons everything else we are attempting to do in the Middle East and with the entire Muslim world.

The mistake the Obama administration has made has been not meaning what it said. The administration has backed off of any pressure on the Netanyahu government and is now humiliatingly trying to bribe it. Netanyahu knows he has nothing to fear from Obama and consequently bows to the demands of the right wing elements and settler parties in the Knesset.

Figure out the right thing to do, do the opposite...that pretty much defines the Obama Middle East strategy.

The White House fell for the most obvious trap - that negotiating peace between Israel and Palestine is the "easy button" and that a settlement will make that whole part of the world blossom into a land of milk and honey.

The White House should have started at the other end - standing tall as a firm friend of Israel and focusing like a laser on the key problem Iran.

Trumping Iran and backing Israel marginalizes Hamas and makes peace possible, not the other way round.

Worse, Washington is still all too willing to play politics with Middle East policy. Over the weekend it tried play up support for ratification of New START by claiming losing the treaty would harm Israel's interests - an assertion that mostly got blank stares and wrinkled brows from Jewish groups and the Israeli government.

Meanwhile, the White House merely watches while Turkey adopts a foreign policy that can only in the end make the region more volatile and less safe.

That's not to so say the White House gets less than zero for all its keystone cops Middle East initiatives.

Obama has not cut and run in Iraq.

The administration is also working to bump up the security of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, working with the GCC missile defense and undertaking a responsible arms sale package to the Saudis

Our government is also paying attention to the threat from Yemen and the problems with piracy and terrorism in Somalia.

The laudable piece parts, however, hardly add up to a coherent and comprehensive strategy...and most notably they are not the "signature" initiatives of the White House.

In the end, all the dithering may not cost Obama much at the polls. The American Jewish vote is unlikely to walk away on-mass from the President. On the other hand, his handling of Middle East policy will not win over many moderates or conservatives.

Where the president is likely to pay a much higher price is in the impact his inept policies will have on foreign policy.

The Obama Doctrine is widely regarded as a complete failure. America's adversaries do not fear this president. America's allies are not confident in his leadership.

That's not good.

It is past time for the president to change course and salvage his stature as a global leader.

In the Middle East that would start with finishing the job in Iraq; standing by Israel; pressing Iran to the wall; and paying attention to Turkey's wrong turn.

The Middle East peace process currently seems to consist of the Arabs and Israelis blaming the Obama administration for a lack of progress, and the Obama administration trying to shift the blame back to the Arabs and Israelis. Not exactly conducive for the formulation and implementation of a comprehensive peace solution.

I don’t want to be too hard on the Obama administration; the list is long of American presidents who have been frustrated by the nature and pace of the peace process. But it is worth remembering that people like Andrew Sullivan promised us that Barack Obama’s image and face alone would help lead to massive and positive changes in world affairs. So much for that hypothesis, at least when it comes to the search for peace in the Middle East.

Laura Halvorsen (guest)
FL:

I find State Rep. James Byrd's comments stunning. Is he really advocating that President Obama step up the arrogance a few notches? Did he really just say that the Chamber of Commerce's membership should only be concerned with the mood of "President of the United States Barack Obama"? Did I wake up this morning in North Korea? Has Rep. Byrd confused democracy with cult of personality? Do people like this really get elected? Seriously?

Todd Fritz (guest)
GA:

The never-ending finger pointing from so-called intellectuals is getting old. I'd like Mr. Miller to explain exactly which president was handed a "good situation" for Arab-Israeli peace prospects, or better yet, to explain why his role from 1978-2003 working as a State Department analyst and negotiator did not produce tangible results. Why didn't he wave his magic wand to make the problem go away?

Jim Wojtasiewicz (guest)
VA:

Americans understand Middle East realities all too well. Thousands of us died on 9/11. Thousands have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, and hundreds of thousands more are deployed in the region, lives on the line to bring peace. Balanced against that are Israeli fanatics frantically populating Palestinian neighborhoods and Palestinian factions squabbling over the scraps of dignity they have left. Where is their respect for our sacrifices?

John Sidwell (guest)
VA:

What do we owe the Israelis that we have to pay them to stop illegal settlements? We have got to threaten cutting all aid to Israel if a Palestinian state does not emerge by the end of 2011. We cannot afford instability in the Middle East. We cannot afford hatred from 1.5 billion Muslims and 60+ nations who are our Muslim and - significantly - non-Muslim allies. Again, remind me what exactly do we owe the theocratic, apartheid state of Israel?

Jeffrey Minch (guest)
TX:

President Obama is a painfully inexperienced negotiator. Why would anyone think that such inexperience would result in any other outcome? Why would this president be any more effective than he has been in his dealings with the Republicans in Congress? He is not a consensus builder. The Mideast is not Chicago.

Tim Gorman (guest)
KS:

To Yousef Munayyer: Who would you talk to in the Palestinian government to get quotes from that actually mean anything? Who has the power to commit to anything said in a quote? This sounds suspiciously like Obama's excuse of "it's a messaging problem." Why do we *always* see Israeli concessions mentioned, either in a pro or con manner, but never Palestinian concessions? Are there no concessions being made on the Palestinian side?

Gabe Iacoboni (guest)
ID:

The Chamber of Commerce cannot be ignored. Why else would the pesident show up? It is obvious, especially with the election that the Chamber and the president have never seen eye to eye and I doubt they ever will. The president and the Chamber both have to play the political game, however, and act like they will work together. To bad it isn't so. If the president were serious about the economy one simple idea: "extend the Bush tax cuts."

Ken Feltman (guest)
DC:

They may talk nice but they won't play nice.

william waldron (guest)
NC:

What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Obama should report who contributed money to him. As for the foreign contributors, that was a White House lie. I can not believe some of you guys are wanting to take money from businesses to give to failed social programs that do not incourage growth. Give them your money, oh, wait, you want take someone else's money. Obama failed because of his social policies.

Fred Croft (guest)
CA:

There's little that the president can say to the Chamber of Commerce that will make any difference. After several years of belittling corporate executives, pointing figers, calling them "fat cats," attempting to raise their tax rates and competing with them in the debt markets, the only thing that CEOs want to hear from Obama is "I won't seek re-election". THAT would move the markets up!

Daniel Robinette (guest)
MD:

I think the last thing the president needs to do is worry about where the Chamber got their money from. More over if our officials including our state reps would stop harping on the past and work on the future we might be able to pull ourselves out of this mess. News flash: Time to stop playing politics as usual and start working together to fix our problems.

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